The present invention is in the field of product processing equipment and, in particular, relates to a new and improved apparatus for processing products, especially but not exclusively printed products.
The apparatus of the invention is generally of the type wherein each of the copies are introduced at an infeed location into compartments or cells of a revolving cell wheel, are processed while residing or dwelling in the compartments, and removed from the compartments at a removal location.
In the context of this disclosure and as will be evident from the discussion of the exemplary embodiments to follow the term "printed products", whether used in the singular or the plural, has ascribed thereto a broad meaning, specifically relates to any type of article or product which can be handled with the equipment of the invention, such as for instance, newspapers, books, inserts, sheets, periodicals, magazines and so forth. Equally, the term "processing", as relates to the apparatus of the invention, is intended to have a broad meaning and encompasses many different operations which can be carried out with the apparatus, such as by way of example, product handling, product transferring, product stuffing, product shifting, product collating, product cutting, product labeling and so forth.
The processing of printed products, copy-for-copy, in the compartments or cells of a cell wheel, in particular the stuffing of inserts into folded printed products, or the collating of individual product sections into a complete product, is already known. Each processing step requires a certain processing time which is governed by the nature of the processing operation and the nature of the processed printed product. On the other hand, the production capacity of machines producing such printed products has noticeably increased in recent times. For instance, production rates of 50,000 copies and more per hour are readily possible at the present time when utilizing rotary printing presses. If it were intended to accommodate a prior art apparatus of the previously mentioned type, prossessing a cell wheel having a vertical axis, to the production output or capacity of, for instance, a modern day rotary printing press with the intent that the apparatus should be capable of processing the entire production output so-to-speak on-line, then the cell wheel, while taking into account the processing time required for each copy, would possess such large dimensions that, as a practical matter, the same could not be realized and, in any event, dimensions of a magnitude such that the manufacture of such type equipment no longer could responsibly guarantee for the operational reliability thereof.
Hence, in view of the fact that there was no practical on-line processing equipment which could effectively handle such large production outputs, it was necessary to initially deliver the printed products emanating from the production machine in the form of a product stack to an intermediate store. Thereafter, the products are delivered from the intermediate store to one or a number of devices for further processing of the products, for instance by supplementing the same with inserts, cutting, folding or labeling them.